What nails it for me is that though he looks like that typical flaky, egotistical, douchebag, womanizing, lead guitarist I've seen and dealt with a million times over and who have made me facepalm every time, Nikki himself is the antithesis of that, being an earnest, well-grounded, and surprisingly respectable guy. In the world of gigging musicians, finding one who's dependable and humble is a needle in a haystack. That is why I've had success in bands, despite being a mediocre-at-best musician.

Also surprising is that while I normally favor strong female characters in my RPG party, none in CC have really gripped me. My party favorites have generally been the guys. I like Kid's spunk, but she's hardly been around. Otherwise, the unconventional women seem most interesting, but get overshadowed once they've served their "guest PC" usefulness. Macha swimming from Termina to Guldove when I recruited Glenn was triathlete-level cool, but I've hardly used her except on a whim. Sprigg seems really interesting (I like her juxtaposition as wise old woman who wants to party- I refer to her as hot rod granny) and would like to have more backstory on her, but she was quickly abandoned for a better character.

EDIT: Now, I soapbox about the CHA family. You know how in FF13, Hope's mom does that whole "moms are tough" spiel? She talks a big game, but if she truly was as tough as she claimed, she would have raised her son to be tough too, and not a watery dishrag (though in Hope's defense, he becomes quite respectable in later Fabula Nova Crystallis games.) Macha truly exemplifies "moms are tough." I mentioned her swimming from Termina to Guldove- that's one tough lady. And then there's Korcha. Everyone sees him as a wild child, nuisance, troublemaker, but not in Macha's house. Macha is the only one who can put the damn kid in his place. Like when she calls him out for being a jerk for not loaning his boat to Serge. She said that Serge didn't say he wouldn't help Kid, he just didn't know what to do. Natural reaction, right? Now you gimme cha boat, boy!

Which brings me to Korcha. As stupid as his outfit is, as annoying as he can be, as piddling as he is in combat (despite having balanced numbers), and being inferior to pretty much every other available blue innate, at least he's not a whiny angst-bucket, cryass, emo-kid. He's hustling, earning his keep as a ferryman and trying to become a better fisherman. And he actively stands for stuff- like trying to free the captive mermaid or fighting the prejudice against demi-humans. Even when he's all pissy after you abandon Kid, his attitude is more "giving you the middle finger while sitting in the punishment corner" than "crying in a corner." Not that it's saying much, but Korcha > Hope (well, at least Hope in the first Fabula Nova Crystallis game.)

Also surprising is that while I normally favor strong female characters in my RPG party, none in CC have really gripped me. My party favorites have generally been the guys. I like Kid's spunk, but she's hardly been around. Otherwise, the unconventional women seem most interesting, but get overshadowed once they've served their "guest PC" usefulness. Macha swimming from Termina to Guldove when I recruited Glenn was triathlete-level cool, but I've hardly used her except on a whim. Sprigg seems really interesting (I like her juxtaposition as wise old woman who wants to party- I refer to her as hot rod granny) and would like to have more backstory on her, but she was quickly abandoned for a better character.

The lady reppage in this game is indeed more miss than hit. There are a few like Steena and Leah who are cool dudettes, but for the most part they're either casters or gimmicky characters (it also doesn't help that all the child size and female only armor suck in this game and only three gals get exclusive weapons for their own; Kid's Knives, Janice's Carrots, and Razzly's Floral Rod).

Basically, from top to bottom, I'd rate them along the lines of:Sprigg (NG+)RiddelRazzlyIrenesSteenaLeahOrlhaPoshulMachaLucciaLeenaMarcyKidJaniceMikiSprigg (R1)NeofloHarleMel

I would have loved for Sneff to be top tier, just because people would have to gauge if they really want his power which comes with his dreadful allure.

My issue with Sneff is that his gimmick is more detrimental than not. Sure, he could suddenly inflate his current HP to a level beyond that of what even the Golden Earring can do for anybody, but more often than not, he's going to be shooting himself in the foot. Also he's got a poor Yellow Innate, neither he nor his weapon type come with any cool freebies and he's part of the reason why SS Zebless is such a pain in the ass (it takes being a cool Blue Innate that looks like Freddie Mercury who can Pillage from Dragons, use Swords and snag an earlyish Level 7 Tech to redeem oneself for being involved in that god awful Zebless segment (and that was just Fargo's alterego who PC Fargo calls out on his bullshit)).

I'm in the middle of the S.S. Zelbess part. I met Miki, lost at roulette with Fargo, got turned into a cat, got the handle from the cheating device, and that's where I left off.

And I still am not sold on Irenes having a German accent. German is a very guttural language and since mermaids are supposed to sing sweetly and smoothly, it reads more harsh to me. Then again, Chrono Cross has been throwing the rule book out the window in many regards, so it's all good.

I'm in the middle of the S.S. Zelbess part. I met Miki, lost at roulette with Fargo, got turned into a cat, got the handle from the cheating device, and that's where I left off.

And I still am not sold on Irenes having a German accent. German is a very guttural language and since mermaids are supposed to sing sweetly and smoothly, it reads more harsh to me. Then again, Chrono Cross has been throwing the rule book out the window in many regards, so it's all good.

Also, at least you can finally take a break from the bullshit now that you have your boat back. Now you have to do the other half of the segment and track down the Demi-human Elder.

Also also, Irenes. Her big thing is being a solid magic user that you can bring into the Dead Sea since you've been picking up primarily physical dudes at this point and you'll want a good magic user to keep Lynx on his toes for the final boss of that area. Also she's Blue Innate with a healing Tech so she can summon Frog Prince or healbot without having to worry about the Dead Sea's boss one-shotting her due to elemental weaknesses (he'll happily wreck her's and everyone else's collective shit from all his other tricks but at least she won't be horribly murdered like Harle will be if you try bringing her into that fight).

Dumb Ratings Edit: Referring again to that awful tier list that you posted earlier, Irenes is way underrated. Yes, her accent is obnoxious, but being a good pick for the Dead Sea boss fight on the first run is on par with being able to steal elemental plates from dragons good and being a solid, non-Black Innate magic user for this point is another solid point in her favor. Her biggest drawbacks beyond her outrageous accent is her poor weapon choice (you might get some mileage out of Nikki's old Pick, especially on NG+; but this is assuming you went with Nikki the first time around, otherwise she doesn't even get that) and the fact that there are simply better healers/magic users later on regardless of how much you put into her so she loses her niche fast. You can also screw her over a bit by screwing up the Black Dragon quest. She's roughly upper mid/lower top material.

If it wasn't abundantly clear, the first time I played CC, I never got as far as I have now. So a lot of what I've played and logged about is new to me.

Anyway, I despise the Isle of the Damned sequence after you get Irenes. That dungeon has no save point, Garai is a difficult boss (the first boss I've encountered so far to annihilate me), and I can't run away from the battle to regroup and/or save. That's a load of donkey crap, since other bosses let me run away so I could regroup. I lost progress here and I'm none too happy about that.

Plus, Lynx is freaking weaksauce. The last two boss battles, he's been knocked unconscious. Lynx is a declawed pussycat. I want Serge back. Black element sucks.

Garai and the Isle of the Damned can bite me!

EDIT: Finally got past that damned Isle of the Damned. I swapped out Norris for Harle and we prevailed- we being Lynx, Irenes, and Harle.

If it wasn't abundantly clear, the first time I played CC, I never got as far as I have now. So a lot of what I've played and logged about is new to me.

Anyway, I despise the Isle of the Damned sequence after you get Irenes. That dungeon has no save point, Garai is a difficult boss (the first boss I've encountered so far to annihilate me), and I can't run away from the battle to regroup and/or save. That's a load of donkey crap, since other bosses let me run away so I could regroup. I lost progress here and I'm none too happy about that.

Plus, Lynx is freaking weaksauce. The last two boss battles, he's been knocked unconscious. Lynx is a declawed pussycat. I want Serge back. Black element sucks.

Garai and the Isle of the Damned can bite me!

EDIT: Finally got past that damned Isle of the Damned. I swapped out Norris for Harle and we prevailed- we being Lynx, Irenes, and Harle.

And this is why I tried to not go too heavily into spoilers territory.

Also, now that you've seen it in action, let me inform you about the general rule of thumb about Chrono Cross's first run's difficulty. That is, the difficulty of any given fight is proportional to how much difficulty Serge/Lynx has in dealing with it. If Serge/Lynx can fight it out without much effort, the fight's a cakewalk, if he's having trouble, you're gonna have trouble, and if he's getting his shit wrecked in like with Garai then you really need to pull out all the stops and hope for the best.

And it's at this point that I'd say is a good point to learn how Field Effects work and how to control it as well as to start packing status effect elements and non-white healing elements.

Also, I would also suggest investing in some Element Traps, especially ones for Black Hole. There's a particular enemy coming up who will declare using a Level 5 element before using it and is a great place to farm them if you can survive.

I keep a wide variety of healing elements in various colors. I can't seem to find enough trap elements or buffs/debffs. I don't have an anti-white, which would be cracker for the Miguel battle (he kicked my ass just now). His HP was low, but he was doing two elemental attacks in a row. Lynx and Irenes were down and Zappa was still standing. I wished I had put diminish on him. I'll probably swap Zappa out for someone else, so I can try and control the field effect to all blue and have Irenes summon Frog Prince. I feel like the key to the Miguel battle is not to let him dictate the field effect.

But talk about a sharp spike. The boss battles were pretty easy until Garai and now Miguel. I know I can beat Miguel, though.

I keep a wide variety of healing elements in various colors. I can't seem to find enough trap elements or buffs/debffs. I don't have an anti-white, which would be cracker for the Miguel battle (he kicked my ass just now). His HP was low, but he was doing two elemental attacks in a row. Lynx and Irenes were down and Zappa was still standing. I wished I had put diminish on him. I'll probably swap Zappa out for someone else, so I can try and control the field effect to all blue and have Irenes summon Frog Prince. I feel like the key to the Miguel battle is not to let him dictate the field effect.

But talk about a sharp spike. The boss battles were pretty easy until Garai and now Miguel. I know I can beat Miguel, though.

Yep. Welcome to the hardest part of the game.

Miguel is where the game is actively targeting and exploiting Serge/Lynx's Achilles' Heel, and, as I mentioned in my previous post, Serge/Lynx's effectiveness is what determines the difficulty level. Basically, Serge/Lynx suffers from Fixed JRPG Protagonist Syndrome where the Protagonist (or MC) is either the very best or close to being the very best in most, if not all JRPG Roles (i.e. Offense, Tanking, Magic, Healing and possibly Speed), which is what affords players the option to use whatever characters as their party members since Serge/Lynx will usually 'got this'.

The other reason why this fight is hard is because you still lack the tools really necessary to deal with foes that set themselves up like this. A White Plate will completely neuter Miguel's scheme since there's almost nothing he can do to Lynx to actually hurt him and Lynx can just slowly solo the fight or something, but you don't get a White Plate until you successfully steal one from the White Dragon later on. As noted above, Anti-White would completely shut Miguel down due to his reliance on White Elements, but you don't get one until you redo Fort Dragonia in Home World (along with all the other Anti-Element elements). Your wingmen are also kinda poor for the task since Zappa's fucking slow, Irenes's durability isn't really enough for this fight, Norris still doesn't have his good weapon yet, Sprigg still can't get a Doppleganger worth a damn yet, Harle has it worse than Lynx, Vann has one shot to roll five out of six to block Miguel's field element shenanigans for a while (and better still if cast before he falls into Critical or immediately after his "I'm in Critical" element spam) but he's a load before then and god help you if you roll a 1 and Radius is only just okay for this point.

My best advice is to stick as many Black Elements onto your characters as possible. Stick them on Red, Blue, whatever Innates like Zappa or Irenes. Stick them on all your level 1 element slots if you have to. As long as you leave Lynx a few for actual damage dealing when not suffering from Anti-Black (and other colors for when he is). That way, even if Miguel covers the field in White, you can drop a single Black to effectively put him back down to 1 White and it'll take three more casts to get rid of that Black, and by then you should be able to get off another Black Element to keep the cycle going.

4th time's the charm! I finally beat Miguel after 4 attempts! My party for this battle was Lynx, Harle, and Irenes. I mostly loaded them down with blue and black elements (with green HealAlls) and was able to summon FrogPrince as my gambit. It knocked 500 HP off Miguel. Irenes' WaterBreath was good too (170 points of damage). Actually, blue attacks in general worked well. Harle was the first to go down (so I couldn't use Moonbeam) but she served her usefulness in setting up the FrogPrince summon. I didn't want to use Revives because white elements would give Miguel an advantage. So it was mostly Lynx and Irenes keeping the field non or minimally white until a HolySword attack knocked Lynx out. Irenes' health was 128 or so and I took the gamble by hitting Miguel with an attack element instead of healing Irenes and the gamble paid off! An 80HP AquaBall, and Miguel threw in the towel.

Now that I can go between worlds now, it's time to save Marbule!

EDIT: Before that, there's business to attend to. In Karsh/Zoah, I chose Zoah since Karsh is more likely to get intel and Zoah's a brute.

EDIT: Before that, there's business to attend to. In Karsh/Zoah, I chose Zoah since Karsh is more likely to get intel and Zoah's a brute.

It's good to take ZOAH here since this is the only point in the game where he's even vaguely relevant to the plot (and you can stop by his room for his Level 7 Tech). Meanwhile Karsh has a couple of sidequests to his name, especially the Dario sidequest.

ANYWAYS, ZOAH. HE'S ANOTHER UNDERWHELMING YELLOW INNATE WITH THE SAME GLOVES WEAPON TYPE THAT A THIRD OF THE CAST USES (OF COURSE, THAT JUST MEANS THAT IF YOU MAIN HIM HE'S GUARANTEED TO HAVE A DECENT WEAPON AVAILABLE). YOUR FIRST YELLOW INNATE THAT ISN'T TERRIBLE, BUT UNFORTUNATELY HE'S STILL NOT THAT GOOD FOR A YELLOW INNATE AROUND (THEN AGAIN, THEY'RE ALL KINDA UNDERWHELMING SINCE THERE AREN'T ANY GOOD YELLOW CASTERS AROUND). STILL, HE HAS A DUAL TECH WITH KARSH (FOR WHAT LITTLE ITS WORTH GIVEN HOW YOU CAN'T USE IT DURING THE DARIO SIDEQUEST UNTIL NG+), AND C'MON! HE'S THE FREAKING LEADER OF THE ROVING BANDITS FROM MAD MAX: ROAD WARRIOR. BASICALLY, HE'S ZAPPA 2.0 BUT GENERALLY WORSE SINCE YELLOW'S ELEMENTS ARE ONLY USEFUL FOR SHUTTING DOWN GREEN INNATE ENEMIES/BOSSES WHICH ARE GENERALLY ANNOYING. I'D BUMP HIM UP AT LEAST 3 RANKS IN THAT TIER LISTING JUST BECAUSE OF THE MAD MAX CONNECTION AND BECAUSE HE'S PROBABLY THE MOST LEGITIMATE REASON FOR EVER USING CAPS LOCK.

Karsh is also fairly middle of the road beefstick, but the Dario sidequest alone make him worth using every so often just to keep him up to date. Without going too much into spoiler territory, the Dario sidequest involves running through a few areas, fighting a few optional boss fights and resolving a few loose ends, namely the question of what happened to Dario. There are a number of good rewards obtained from running the sidequest (most notable being the best weapon in the game) but it can be difficult since you'll end up facing a tough boss with a mostly fixed party of Lynx/Serge, Karsh and one other (which is part of why its so tough and for the first run it's better to go at it with Lynx instead of Serge; namely because you don't have worry about which White Innate gets the Black Plate, but also because one of the other rewards for completing this fight involves making another sidequest a little bit easier which could also be tackled before this one). Beyond that though, Karsh is a solid Green Innate Ax fighter which would be nice if he could also use Hammers and wasn't competing directly with Glenn for strongest physical Green Innate and has the aforementioned Dual Tech with ZOAH. He's basically Zappa but Green, but his sidequests are just that important to warrant a spot on the active roster even if you don't like the guy. I'd say, tier list-wise, he's actually fine where he is for the most part (both Lynx being lower and Norris being higher than him is dumb, but that's why the tier list is dumb; or at least among the reasons why).